Sure, it’s easy to upload your company’s videos and your friend’s videos to Youtube. It’s hosted for free and can stand virtually unlimited downloads. But I can do that right here at my web provider without giving my content to a third party… who -might- be around in 5 years and -might- keep the links to my content the same for 5 years, without selling out to Youtube’s advertising.

Yes, you’ll get more exposure by posting to Youtube. And using their limitless bandwidth for high-bandwidth applications is nice. But you should post locally and then consider posting to Youtube as part of your marketing plan or “emergency bandwidth plan”. Always link back to the original content. It’s just too easy to give the “keys to the store” to too many people.

Update 3-13-08: I just read this article about Youtube. It reminds me of Kozmo.com in the dot com era.

Rex Wong, chief executive of Next.TV (formerly Dave Networks)… says, it costs a provider about $2.50 for every 1,000 views of a user-generated three-minute video clip. But that clip will bring in just $1 or so in banner ad revenue, he says. In other words, says Wong, profit can only be made when clips are getting tens of thousands of views.

So let me get this straight: it costs $2.50 to serve 1,000 views… and that generates $1 in revenue. (1-2.5=-1.5) And if we do that a whole lot, we’ll make it up in volume! Yeah.